During braking, vehicle tires rely on friction (or traction) between the tire and the contact surface (i.e., the ground) in order to decelerate or stop the vehicle. In some situations, the contact surface may become contaminated with ice. The ice reduces the friction between the tire and the contact surface, and in many instances will cause the tire to skid, especially when the vehicle is attempting rapid deceleration. Such skidding increases the distance necessary to stop the vehicle, and in some instances can cause the operator to lose control of the vehicle and leading to an undesirable condition.
Typically, existing systems may rely on studded tires, tire chains, deeply grooved tires, or reduced tire pressure to increase the friction of the tire to the contact surface during icy contact surface conditions. However, such systems may actually reduce the effectiveness of the tire on dry surfaces, thus requiring an operator to change the tires during icy conditions. Such changing of the tires may be impractical, especially on large commercial vehicles such as aircraft and trucks. Alternatively, high friction materials such as sand or gravel may be spread on the contact surface in an attempt to reduce skidding of tires. However, such high friction materials may cause damage to vehicles due to the material being flung from tires, becoming airborne and striking the vehicles.
Such high friction materials may also be unsuitable for certain environments, such as aircraft runways. For example, due to the operation of turbine engines on aircraft runways, the high friction materials (which may be referred to herein as foreign object debris (FOD)) may be sucked into the intake of the turbine engines causing damage to the engine. There is thus a need for an anti-skid system that remedies such issues.